HARMAN SPARKS BROWN SEXISM ROW
Harriet Harman is set to suggest that Gordon Brown sidelined her because she was a woman when she makes a speech tonight blasting sexism in Westminster.
The shadow culture secretary will link the former prime minister's decision not to make her deputy prime minister to her gender and recount how she was relegated to a dinner for leaders' wives at a major summit, according to the London Evening Standard.
But the claims were immediately dismissed as "utter bilge" by Mr Brown's former spin doctor Damian McBride, who appeared to accuse the Labour chairwoman of being "useless".
Ms Harman was elected as the party's deputy leader in 2007, the same year Mr Brown became prime minister.
Although she will not name him directly, Ms Harman is expected to say that "even getting to the top is no guarantee of equality".
"Imagine my surprise when having won a hard-fought election to succeed John Prescott as deputy leader of the Labour Party, I discovered that I was not to succeed him as Deputy Prime Minister," she will say, according to the Standard.
"If one of the men had won the deputy leadership would that have happened? Would they have put up with it? I doubt it.
"And imagine the consternation in my office when we discovered that my involvement in the London G20 summit was inclusion at the No 10 dinner for the G20 leaders' wives.
"We must remember Caroline Flint's denunciation of women being used as 'window dressing'."
Ms Harman is renowned for campaigning on gender equality, work that has seen her labelled Harriet Harperson by some.
She is expected to tell how she was told to fit in by being "clubbable" in the bars of Westminster but her refusal to tow the line led to an "often nasty" response.
Mr McBride was quick to respond to the claims that Ms Harman had missed out because of her gender, insisting Mr Brown only judged his team on whether they were "useless or not".
He insisted that former business minister Baroness Vadera had been given a "vital role" at the London G20 summit in 2009.
"As every man and woman who ever worked for him could attest, Gordon judged people on only one thing: were they useless or not," he said on Twitter.
"Shriti Vadera was given a crucial role to play at the G20 not cos of her position but cos she could make a crucial contribution whereas someone like me had no contribution to make to the summit so I was put in charge of media for the spouses. I am a man.
"It's utter bilge from Harriet, done to make her attack on Dave look non-partisan. And shameful timing given the work GB is doing in Nigeria.
"That dinner was a gathering of Britain's leading women across all walks of life, of which I thought she'd count herself one."
